Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
The last I heard…
I sat on the edge of my bed, knuckles bleached white where they gripped the rough sheets. Every time I closed my eyes I saw flames.
My people.
Burning.
…the stone was on…
A muscle ticked in my jaw, an ache spread out to curl around my temple. I took a deep breath and could have sworn I caught the scent of charred wood and scorched flesh in the stale air on the ship.
…Selhveina.
When I blinked again, the mattress was beneath my feet and I was already putting one foot onto the ledge of the small port window. I’d dragged myself into the ventilation shaft by the time my mind caught up with my body and I paused to get my bearings.
I’d seen where they’d taken the male for interrogation.
I slid on my belly toward the holding cell, unable to shake the memories.
All the blood in my body ran cold and I couldn’t even remember why I wanted to see this in the first place.
But I dragged myself up the other side to peer into a stark white room with paneled lighting ringing the perimeter.
The male from the dock sat strapped in standard-issue cuffs to a chair.
I knew the weight of those cuffs, and the skin of my wrists burned at the sight.
“…might as well tell us,” Hudzon finished in the smooth cadence of theirs from one of the pools of shadows.
A sheen of sweat gleamed across the prisoner’s face, the flaps at his throat pulsing every few seconds as beneath his chair a pool of translucent blood grew. Suddenly Crux appeared, a hand over the male’s neck, pressing two fingertips into the slits on the side of his throat.
The male screamed. My ears rang and I fought the urge to cover them, especially when Crux’s other hand came up to give the other side the same treatment.
Just enough of his profile was visible for me to see his mouth move, though it was indistinguishable past the male’s anguish.
It could have been moments or minutes later when Crux’s hands fell.
The male slumped before a volley of vomit spewed from his lips and onto the floor.
Crux jumped back with a curse, narrowly missing the spray.
My ears rang in the silence.
“Selhveina,” the male groaned.
A sigh crawled through the room and the hulking Captain Ruciyah stepped from the shadows. His cowl was pushed back so that the back of his helmet caught the light. My heartbeat drummed in my ears as he knelt beside the male. “You know how I know that’s not true, don’t you?”
The male spluttered, shaking his head frantically from side to side.
Captain Ruciyah’s gloved hands rose to either side of his mask, fingers pressing in on two grooves.
It hissed as the top of the mask opened and he pulled it off.
The bottom was still in place, though I couldn’t tell from this angle exactly how much it covered.
I could only see blue-black hair knotted at the top of his head, a few tendrils loose and swaying with his movement.
The male’s eyes widened in horror and his feet scrabbled against the floor as if they might find purchase.
Captain Ruciyah slowly rose to his full height and from this angle I could just catch sight of the helmet still covering the lower half of his face and connecting behind his neck.
Only the skin of his temple—a dusky pale blue—was exposed.
“Y-yes,” the male finally gasped, his body vibrating now with tension, or perhaps it was fear.
Like the predator he was, the captain circled the man and I could not stop the cry that bubbled up my throat at the sight.
Blue skin with silver markings running in a line of text vertically down the right side of his face, over his eye.
And I knew those markings ran down the corner of his mouth, over his throat and into his collar.
Just as I knew his lips would be full and the line of his cheekbones was sharp like the knife on his hip.
Because I had seen this face before, even if half of it was hidden by that horrid helmet.
And though the male beneath him wheezed and thrashed, at my cry those silver eyes flicked up to mine where I crouched in the vent.
There was no recognition there, no spark of life behind his irises.
He could have still been wearing the mask for all the emotion he showed.
It didn’t matter to him I watched as he slipped his blade from the sheath and flipped it in his grip. He pressed the tip of that quara blade to one of the slits in the man’s neck. Another spray of pearlescent blood. Another wail.
I only had eyes for the male holding the knife.
“Either come down or leave,” the captain rumbled.
But I knew now the mask didn’t change his voice, only amplified it, because I heard it every time I fell asleep.
Every time I burned alive.